Bachmann, meanwhile, rolled her road show across Iowa on Friday, deploying crisp one-liners and savvy stagecraft to rally supporters to the straw poll.
With Elvis blaring through a parking lot at her final rally of the day, in Ames, the Minnesota congresswoman bounded out of her campaign bus, grabbed her husband, Marcus, and began dancing the jitterbug before unleashing a flurry of attacks on Obama.
Ames Straw Poll Game: Test your nomination knowledge
“Iowa is the place that launched Barack Obama, and Iowa will be the place that gets to put that presidency to an end,” she told a cheering crowd of about 150 people at Iowa State University, where the straw poll will be held Saturday.
When she finished her remarks, she wrapped up by tossing popcorn balls into the crowd.
At the straw poll, passersby can walk through a series of tents that are positioned and sized according to how much the candidates paid. The campaigns ply supporters with free tickets, free shuttle rides and free barbecue — hopeful that their efforts will pay off with the few thousand votes it will take to win the contest.
For weeks, Pawlenty has focused on winning the straw poll, crisscrossing Iowa with scores of stops and collecting hundreds of names, numbers and e-mail addresses to draw supporters to Ames. Even on Thursday, in the moments before Fox News started its broadcast of the debate, a dozen or so volunteers at his Iowa headquarters in Urbandale were working the phones.
“I can give you so many options!” one volunteer said enthusiastically into his cellphone, pacing the carpeted office. “We have a bus leaving Wal-Mart. We have a shuttle running all day long between Ankeny and Ames. It’s going to start at 9 o’clock and run all day back and forth. So you can park anytime at the middle school and then you can get on the shuttle and come back when you want and you’re done. Is that something you’d like to do?”
Pawlenty’s organizational firepower goes up against the more dramatic energy that both Bachmann and Paul have drawn from supporters.
Paul paid $31,000 for the prime tent spot just outside the Hilton Coliseum where voting will take place. And to encourage voter loyalty, Paul’s campaign is helping to pay the $30 straw poll ticket price. Other campaigns are paying the full freight, but the idea is that a voter who chips in $10 is more likely to show up and vote for Paul.
“We’ve picked up a number of volunteers because a lot more people know him and support him,” said Gary Howard, a spokesman for Paul. “Last time around, there was no tea party. Now there is.”
Staff writers Chris Cillizza and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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